It’s time for the next King’s CROWNing Authors (Cajoling Random Observations Now) interview. Please welcome, Gary Meehan.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1. Describe your ideal monster using only verbs?

Fleeing. The ideal monster is one I don’t have to fight.

2. When you finish writing a book is it like a nap or a skipping run?

A nap, and a brief one at that. You never finish a book, you merely start procrastinating the next round of drafting or edits or copy edits or proofing or foreign edits or casually flicking through a published volume and cringing at some mistake you let slip.

3. The tea pot is empty and you need fuel to write, what ever will you do?

Take a shotgun to the teapot: real writers drink coffee and trust me I will never run out of that.

4. Finish this sentence – Writing inspiration comes from…

… plotting revenge on your enemies and realising while you’re being a bit silly (and psychotic) you might have a kernel of a story.

5. List the feels you get from copy editing?

Despair, resignation, shame, aching back.

6. Do authors get a butler when they are published?

Yes, but we all have to share the same one on rotation. My turn is due June 2038. I’m looking forward to having my desk tidied.

7. You are surrounded by foes while sipping afternoon tea, write your way out using only adverbs.

Bitterly, scaldingly, blindingly, swiftly, elbowingly, dashing-for-the-door-ingly. Hey, you never said they had to be real adverbs.

8. Cake and books or vodka and writing?

Vodka and writing. However, the more you have of the first the less you can do of the latter. My typing goes to pot at this first whiff of alcohol.

9. Best secret writing tip?

Scare yourself by including something deeply personal in your manuscript. And lessen the fear by reminding yourself you never have to admit it’s real.

10. Please write a question for me.

Why, in a civilisation that can calculate the atoms in the universe and gaze into the universe of the atom, are Arriva allowed to run a bus service?

For the simple reason that without experiencing pain we would never understand the experience of joy, or arriving on time.

Thank you, Gary.

About Gary Meehan

I was born in Bolton, Lancashire, and was educated at Lincoln College, Oxford, The University of Aberdeen and The University of Warwick. I live in Derby with my son, where I work as a software engineer and on maintaining an air of bemused detachment. After a quarter century of writing, I really should have come up with witty to put in my bio.
Gary Meehan’s first novel, True Fire, was published last year by Quercus and is long-listed for the 2015 Branford Boase Prize. The sequel,True Dark, is due out April 2nd.

Twitter Bio:  Programmer, writer and exiled Lancastrian. Author of YA fantasies TRUE FIRE (Quercus, 2014) and TRUE DARK (coming April 2015). Rep’d by Claire Wilson at RCW.

He is represented by Claire Wilson at Rogers Coleridge and White.

Links

https://twitter.com/garypmeehan

https://garymeehan.wordpress.com

http://www.thetruetrilogy.co.uk/

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