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Shaun Allan Interview 4/22/2012 7:17:22 AM
Debut author Shaun Allan discusses his works and the writing life! For today’s guest blog, I’d like to introduce you to a very talented author with a great novel to share, Shaun Allan. I’d like to begin by having you share a little information about yourself with our readers, Shaun. What do you enjoy doing when you’re not writing?
SA: Hi Lorna. Thanks very much for this opportunity. Thanks even more so for the talented author bit. Of course you’re not wrong but it’s nice to be told, lol.
What do I enjoy doing when I’m not writing? Well, to be honest I have so little time for actual writing, it’s nice to BE putting the words down. I have such a busy work life and home life that being an author is something I have to squeeze in when I can. Perhaps that’s why it took me ten years to complete Sin. I do, though I don’t know if I should admit to this, enjoy my job, but I LOVE my family life. I have an amazing fiancée and two wonderful daughters (one only 10 months old) and they take up almost all my time. But that’s ok, as our house is constantly filled with laughter.
Outside of that, I am SUCH a gadget geek, much to the head shaking of my fiancée, and I really enjoy films and music. I like all sorts of both – I can’t wait for the Avengers, Batman and Men in Black III this year, but also… erm… had something in my eye watching the Notebook the other night. With music, we’re big 80s fans (though my fiancée is 13 years younger than me, she still likes the music that was ‘my era’), and saw Cyndi Lauper last year (can still belt ‘em out) and Howard Jones last week (still good). Lost Prophets is this weekend and we saw Snow Patrol in February – easily the best concert I’ve been to.
I understand that you’ve been writing stories all your life. Why did you wait until last year to publish your first full-length novel?
SA: I certainly have been writing since being a small child. I suppose I tend to be undisciplined when writing. I write as the story takes me, so can write a whole load of words in one story, then suddenly begin another or pick up an older one. With Sin, it started off as a short story. I thought that was it and it was finished, but now that short story is the prologue to the book and Sin even has his own blog and Twitter account.
I sat down sometime in November to write some of Mortal Sin (the sequel) and a thousand words later realized I was finding out how Rudolph saved Christmas in a story that resulted in a follow up to my Zits’n’Bits children’s collection. With Sin, I kept writing bits here and there as and when I could – sometimes 200 words a week, in one place (bad place) not a single word in a year. I have an old school friend who now lives in California who was an avid follower and would never let me leave it too long before he had another installment. It was quite funny when he came over to the UK at Christmas and shoved two copies of my book under my nose in a busy restaurant to sign!
In the middle of all this, I’d also written 30,000 words of a children’s book, Puddlebrain, and promptly forgot about it as Sin progressed. I’ve since picked that back up and am trying to finish it before working on Sin’s sequel.
So, really, last year was when Sin was finally finished. My fiancée took me off to Luxor in Egypt the September before, somewhere I’ve wanted to go since being a child, and I managed – in amongst the Valley of the Kings etc. – to write 15,000 words. I was SO in the zone and she enjoyed watching me fill notebook after notebook. I could finally see the end of the book and completed it in the February – though typing up those 15,000 words was a beast of a job!
I’ve had the opportunity to read an excerpt from your debut novel, Sin and I don’t think I’ll toss another coin again without thinking about this book! ;-) What was the inspiration behind this story and can you tell us a little bit about your protagonist, Sin?
SA: My mind tends to make odd leaps – as you might be aware reading Sin. The inspiration had nothing to do with the subject of the book. Being a gadget geek and interested in science and so on, I’ve long had a fascination with black holes. The Singularity Point is the point at which the laws of space and time cease to exist (more or less), and I’d had an email address along those lines. I started to think of the ‘Sin’ part of Singularity and then, simply, wrote “Name’s Sin.” That was how the book started. I didn’t know where it was going, or what was going to happen. I suddenly had a character and his name was Sin.
Sin, the person, just wants to be an ordinary guy. For most of his life he was, too. He didn’t have a good relationship with his parents (they DID name him Sin, after all), his sister committed suicide, but he took it on the chin and tried to make these things make him a better person. Then, one day, he picks up a coin, flips it, and sees a bus drive into a post office.
Thus begins his decent into NOT being just the ordinary guy he wanted to be. Extraordinary things happen, things that he has no control of. He hates this. He doesn’t want this curse, but he can’t do anything about it. He wants to do right but can’t help do wrong.
Sin is very much a part of me. He has my tangential thoughts (which do end up relevant!), my sometimes offbeat sense of humour, which is his defense against the things that are happening. I, myself, have tried to make sure that some of the rough spots I’ve had have turned to my advantage rather than knocking me back. I don’t think I would change anything, if I could live my life again, as it’s all made me the person I am today – and I don’t think I’ve turned out too bad. Sin is like that, and he uses humour to filter out the horrors he endures.
I’ve had readers telling me that they end up laughing while something really bad is happening. They’ve cried at other points, and, though they don’t particularly like Sin at the beginning, they can’t help but warm to him and sympathize with his plight.
Without giving away too much, can you reveal what’s in store for the readers when they crack open Sin?
SA: A rollercoaster ride, is how one reviewer described it. Dark and disturbing (and amazing) is another. Original and completely new. This is how other people describe Sin. I think you’re in for something unexpected. It reached number 9 in horror on Amazon and is number 1 in psychological thriller, but I think it’s somewhere in between. It has a ‘quiet horror’ as you’re seeing the bad things through Sin’s eyes, and he deals with them in a very matter-of-fact way, with tongue in cheek humour, to stop it driving him mad. After all, just because he incarcerates himself in a mental asylum, it doesn’t necessarily mean he’s crazy.
You’ll have to make your own mind up as to whether he’s not.
Number 1 in psychological thrillers? That is excellent! Now, becoming a published author is truly a difficult road to travel, so I’m always pleased when a fellow writer is plucked from relative obscurity to land a book deal. Can you share that moment when you sold your story to Fantasy Island Book Publishing?
SA: I was at work, actually. I was emailing an author friend who’d read and loved Sin and he recommended it to his publisher. The publisher agreed and wanted to take me on board.
It’s very difficult to be sitting at your desk working, and trying to keep the bouncing feeling you have locked inside!
What is the most important lesson you’ve learned on the road to publication?
SA: Writing the book – even one that takes ten years, is only a small part of the ‘job’. You need to put a lot of work and effort into promoting yourself.
Saying that, I have to say it’s worth it. I have met SO many lovely people since I published. I’ve had amazing reviews and have made some firm friends – a lot of whom are in other countries.
Still on the subject of writing styles, are you a plotter or pantser? The readers would like to know if you tend to plot out your story line in great detail or if your writing is more organic with the characters and events unfolding as you write.
SA: A pantser, definitely. I have sometimes thought I should plan my stories out. I should do character outlines and figure out the main plot aspects. Unfortunately, I can’t. As you can see from Mortal Sin becoming Rudolph Saves Christmas, things don’t work out as planned. I don’t know, a lot of the time, what is going to happen. I hope that the fact that I’m surprised by situations, the reader might be too.
It’s much the same with Sin’s blog. It’s his diary from within his asylum and usually I just have the starting sentence and nothing more. I don’t know where it’s going to go, whether a new character will be introduced or anything. I find out as I write, and I really enjoy that. Sometimes the blog is based around a particular event (Christmas, Valentine’s Day etc.) or I’m writing an entry to help promote another author’s book, so their character becomes a resident, but even then, I don’t know how the tale will wag.
At one time or another, most writers hit the wall and their work stalls because of the dreaded writer’s block. What do you do to get around or over this mental wall to resume writing?
SA: It’s not quite like that. I don’t see a wall, or struggle. I have an urge to write or I don’t. At the moment, and for a while, the urge has been almost overpowering. Frustratingly so, at times. I wrote a guest post on this very subject (my guest posts are on my web site). For a whole year, a difficult time, I had nothing. Now I don’t force it. I let it come when it’s ready, confident that it will. At the very least, I have the blog entries to write, which are only 300-500 words or so, and they are all individual so if a story isn’t flowing, I can write a blog entry on something completely different.
Who is your favourite author and how has he/she inspired you to write or influenced your writing style or choice of genre?
SA: Over the years, my tastes have changed. I started out reading Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke. I moved on to fantasy with Terry Brooks and David Eddings and then Dean Koontz and Stephen King grabbed my attention. I’m luck and humbled that Sin has been compared to both King and Koontz (and even Hitchcock!). I’m interested in science and the paranormal anyway, but I do write various genres. I have humour, science fiction, horror and children’s. Sin could quite easily have become a children’s book (well, maybe not with that title) but the story doesn’t start out being a specific genre. It sort of grows into it.
What are you reading now, and how did this particular book make it onto your to-read list?
SA: I have a couple of Stephen King books waiting to be read, but they took a back seat to Alison DeLuca’s steampunk novels. I’d never tried a steampunk book before, but I was hooked by these. I am currently 75% of the way through my very first autobiography. Michael McIntyre is a very funny comedian, and I’m a big fan. My fiancée bought me his book for Christmas and inside was a pair of tickets to see him later this year.
What do you foresee in your future over the next five years and do you hope to branch out into other genres? Can your fans expect a sequel to Sin in the near future?
SA: Hmmm… I try not to look ahead too much. I hope people are still enjoying Sin. In fact, I hope to follow in your footsteps and have Sin become a movie! As for other genres, I do dip in to them, as I’ve said, but I think my genre of preference is Weird. All of my stories, regardless of specific genre, have an aspect of ‘out of the ordinary.’
A sequel to Sin is already started, the first chapters being at the end of the print edition (and soon the Kindle version). I can’t give anything away as I have no idea what is going to happen. Hopefully I’ll find out soon!
