Q&A with R.T. Lowe!

Hey everyone! I'm super excited to be hosting R.T. Lowe today, who is here to answer some questions for us. He is the author of The Felix Chronicles: Freshmen, which I read and really enjoyed. The second book in the series, Five Days in January is out now and I personally can't wait to read it!

Hello, and thank you for joining us today in this Q&A session! So, the first question that comes to mind is: did you find anything particularly challenging about writing the second installment in the series?

I'm not sure if other authors have similar experiences with sequels, but for me anyway, the second book in the series really seemed to flow and take shape almost effortlessly. In Freshmen, I spent a good amount of time establishing the background of the story and building Felix's world (Portland College and his relationships with his hometown friend Allison, his reality star roommate Lucas, their friends Harper and Caitlin, and of course Bill the groundskeeper), so in Five Days in January, I was able to rely on the first book's foundation, and the result is a story that starts off with a very harrowing encounter with some unsavory creatures in the woods and then it just picks up steam from there. As you can probably tell, I'm very excited and happy with how the book turned out, and I hope everyone enjoys reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

When do you find time to write?

I'm a lawyer with unfortunately typical lawyerly hours and I have three boys under the age of five, so finding time to write is a bit of a challenge. When I began writing the first installment of The Felix Chronicles, I realized I'd either have to sacrifice sleep or sacrifice my dream of writing a book. So for the past three years, I've been writing between the hours of four and six in the morning. It isn't easy, but I honestly love writing, and after finishing Freshmen and then Five Days in January, I can't really imagine giving up on Felix and Allison until their story has run its course.

Is there anything else you'd like people to know about you or your books?

Other than my wife, no one knows I wrote it. Not family. Not friends. Not the people I work with. At first I kept it to myself because I didn't want well-intentioned supporters flooding my Amazon page with ridiculously glowing reviews. But now that Five Days in January is available and it's been a year since Freshmen was published, I've decided to keep it under wraps because I'm curious about whether anyone I know will ever realize I wrote The Felix Chronicles. I think the question of how 'successful' a book must be before family and friends find out you wrote it is an interesting one, and I'll be sure to let you know if someone uncovers my secret.

Definitely let us know! Thanks for being with us today. I personally look forward to reading Five Days in January soon!

The Felix Chronicles: Five Days in January Synopsis

Felix and Allison return from winter break with hopes of settling into the comfortable rhythms of college life only to find Portland College hasn't escaped the wave of senseless violence sweeping across the land, from the malls of Minnesota to a small town in northern Maine. Amidst the chaos, a political movement rises, fueled by the turmoil threatening to tear the country apart. As the public's discontent reaches a final tipping point, a new hope emerges from an unexpected figure, a man offering the promise of peace and security - the prospect of 'freedom from fear'. When the line that separates allies from enemies blurs and good and evil becomes a matter of perspective, Felix must make a choice. But as the gears of a 2,000-year-old prophecy grind inexorably to the future, can Felix choose his own path, or is free will as illusory as the salvation promised by a man destined to set the world aflame?

Find it on Amazon.

About the author:

R.T. Lowe is the author of The Felix Chronicles: Freshmen (Book 1) and Five Days in January (Book 2). R.T. Lowe is a graduate of Willamette University and Columbia Law School. Originally from Oregon, he now lives in Newtown, Connecticut with his wife and three kids.

GUEST POST by Blair Howard on writing mystery

It's been less than six months since I decided to try my hand at writing detective novels. It was something I'd wanted to do for more than 30 years. The first book in the series, Harry Starke, was published in September and was quickly followed by two more, Two for the Money and Hill House.

All three are, I'm happy to say, doing quite well. Harry Starke has just received its 20th review, and is rated overall at 4.5 out of 5. Even the few 3-star reviews are good. Thank you one and all. And so the series continues with Checkmate, the 4th in the series due in February 2016, and I continue to try to write the best detective novels I can. Speaking of which:
It ain't easy folks. To write a true who done it is in itself a puzzlement. The task is to craft a believable story, a mystery that will keep the reader guessing right to the end, to hide the solution in such a way that when revealed the reader says: Wow, I didn't see that coming. To do that, I have to hide it from myself. I never know the solution to the mystery myself until the story is almost complete. You can't cheat the reader. The solution must be believable. You can't make the perp some obscure character that's mentioned only in passing, nor can it be the obvious choice, although I have seen that done.

The solution to Hill House came to me in a flash of inspiration as I was writing the third to last chapter. Up until that point I had no idea 'who done it', then suddenly, the light went on, and I had it. When it happens, and it always does, it's a moment like no other. When the solution to Hill House came to me, I sat there and smiled at the screen. It was the same with the first two Harry Starke novels, but Hill House was different. I wasn't expecting it, at least not then. Wow. It's moments like that I live and write for.

All of my detective novels start out in the same way, with a single scene. For Harry Starke, it was a beautiful girl jumping off a bridge at midnight. In Two for the Money, it was a late night phone call. Hill House? The body of a girl long dead discovered under the floorboards of a derelict house. For my new novel, Checkmate, it's the discovery of a body on a golf course. Once I have that first scene, I look for photographs I can use for inspiration. I take that first scene and play with it. I ask myself the eternal questions: Who? Why? How? When? The answers to those questions, hoy Harry Starke and the rest of the characters handle them, drive the story to its conclusion.

I have to confess that ideas for my detective novels don't come easy. No, I don't suffer from writer's block, but if I didn't manage to find those first, inspirational scenes, I probably would. Where do they come from? They are everywhere. Life is full of such scenes. All you have to do is recognize them, grab them, and then develop them. Hill House came from an old three-story house, now demolished, that I passed by several times a week on my way into town. Each time I did, I saw it out of the corner of my eye, and it intrigued me. The opening scene in the first Harry Starke novel, the suicide, came to me one day several years ago as I stood on Walnut Bridge and looked down into the water. You'll know them when you see them.

Finally, to write a true detective story is to have more fun than any human being deserves to have. Who said that? Dave Ramsey, I think. No matter. It's true, and I am ever grateful to my readers and the validation they provide.

Harry Starke is available on Amazon U.S. and Amazon UK. You can find Two for the Money on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk

About the author

Blair Howard was born and raised in a small town in England, near Stratford-Upon-Avon, on the edge of the English Cotswolds. He is the author of the Harry Starke series of novels: hard-boiled detective stories set in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The first book was released early in September 2015; the second book, Two for the Money, was released on October 19, 2015. Book 3 in the series, Hill House, will be released early in mid-December. Blair also writes sweeping historical epics, five historical novels of the American Civil War and the American West. He is also the author of more than 30 non-fiction books and more than 4,500 magazine, newspaper and web articles. You can follow Blair on Facebook, Google Plus and Twitter, or visit his blog and his website.

GUEST POST by Michelle Hauck - How NaNoWriMo Motivated Me

Hey everyone! Today, I'm really excited to be hosting Michelle Hauck, author of GRUDGING (out today!), who's here to share with us her experience participating in NaNoWriMo. Thank you so much, Michelle!

I want to tell you why entering NaNoWriMo (National Write a Novel in a Month) can be a blessing. But first let's go back a little ways.

It was fall of 2013, and I had just landed a literary agent as summer ended. My middle grade manuscript was out on submission with all the big name publishers. People from HarperCollins, Hachette, Penguin and Random House (this was before their imprints merged) were reading my little story. There was really nothing further I could do. It was out of my hands. That meant it was time to move forward with a fresh manuscript. Something to give my agent if the middle grade didn't get a six-figure offer.

If you're not a writer, you don't know how hard that can be. These are your darling characters. You've slaved over them for months. You've become attached. You know them as well as you know yourself - how they'll react, how they think. The characters from your last book are familiar friends. It hurts to leave them, sort of like a break up. And for someone new. Some character you don't know the least thing about yet. Ugh. It's so difficult.

But necessary.

Maybe some writers can jump straight into another story, but I always need a bit of cooling off period first. I took a month. A month wasn't too long. Then things came up. It stretched to two months. How could I concentrate on something new when the big people were reading my pages? Might contact me at any moment with a high-powered deal.

But a little voice kept saying, "And what if they don't. What will you have to show your agent?"

Darn it all. The little voice was right. I needed to get busy. So I searched around for something to write about and came up with a big, fat nothing. I'm not a big idea person who can crank out ideas for novel plots at the drop of a hat. Luckily, I heard a song on the radio. I won't go into details too much because I talked about this in several other interviews, but this song (Come Along by Vicci Martinez) had marvelous lines for a fantasy story. It got me thinking about sirens using their voices to lure people. About characters who might be friends or they might be enemies, and maybe it took them a long time to decide which. About a city surrounded by foes and a blood-thirsty army, and the desperate lengths it would send people.

So I had enough of an idea for a couple of chapters. I could picture a character or two. As a pantser writer (no outline or detailed plan), that's really all I needed. Now I just had to sit down at the laptop and face the blank screen and put down some words. But... but what if it wasn't perfect. Or what if my agent called with good news and I had to switch gears again? Maybe I should check my email inbox about 500 more times first. I could start this new story tomorrow. Tomorrow was soon enough.

A couple of days of this and it became apparent that I needed help. That's when inspiration struck. NaNoWriMo started in a few days!

I'd never tried to enter this before. There was no way I could write 50,000 words in a month. I'm way too slow of a writer. I average a chapter a week on a good week. That would be four chapters in a month, possibly 12,000 words. Far short of the 50,000 word goal to enter NaNoWriMo. And I didn't like that kind of pressure. But this year was different. This year I tasted desperation. I needed to get going on writing something.

So I took the plunge and signed up for NaNoWriMo in November of 2013. On November 1st, I took off like a shot and got a respectable word count for a single day of close to 1,500. I was impressed with myself. And better, I was learning about my new characters, getting a feel for the new story. And the page wasn't blank anymore.

The days went by and I reported my word count on Twitter under the #NaNoWriMo tag. I was falling farther and father behind on the goals. Within two weeks, other people were declaring themselves finished. They'd reached the 50K mark. I was still at 10K. But I didn't feel bad. NaNoWriMo had motivated me. By the end of the month I'd reached an astounding total for me - 20,000 words.

But despite "losing" at NaNoWriMo my new story was off. I had ideas. I had an interest in seeing where the characters would take me. I forgot to stare at my inbox, waiting to hear from my agent. (That middle grade story never did sell.) I knew I would finish this one. And finish I did, in an unspectacular ten months, instead of one.

But you know what else?

I edited that story that lost in NaNoWriMo. I sent it to my agent and we revised some more. It went out into submission land where big people read it. It landed a three book deal with a Big 5 publisher called HarperCollins. Now I have the first installment of a trilogy coming out from Harper Voyager on November 17th. A little story called Grudging that came from a song, and was made possible because NaNoWriMo forced me to be responsible and write.

About the book

A world of chivalry and witchcraft...and the invaders who would destroy everything.

The North has invaded, bringing a cruel religion and no mercy. The ciudades-estados who have stood in their way have been razed to nothing, and now the horde is before the gates of Colina Hermosa... demanding blood.

On a mission of desperation, a small group escapes the besieged city in search of the one thing that might stem the tide of Northerners: the witches of the southern swamps.

The Women of the Song.

But when tragedy strikes their negotiations, all that is left is a single untried knight and a witch who has never given voice to her power. And time is running out.

A lyrical tale of honor and magic, Grudging is the opening salvo in the Book of Saints trilogy.

GRUDGING is out TODAY

November 17, 2015

Published by Harper Voyager

Find it: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | iBooks | Goodreads

About Michelle

Michelle Hauck lives in the bustling metropolis of northern Indiana with her hubby and two teenagers. Besides working with special needs children by day, she writes all sorts of fantasy, giving her imagination free range. She is a co-host of the yearly query contests Query Kombat, Nightmare on Query Street, New Agent, PitchSlam, and Sun versus Snow. Her Birth of Saints trilogy from Harper Voyager starts with GRUDGING on November 17, 2015. Her epic fantasy, KINDAR'S CURE, was published by Divertir Publishing.

Find her online

Twitter: @Michelle4Laughs

Blog: Michelle4Laughs: It’s in the Details

Facebook: Michelle Hauck, Author

Goodreads: Grudging

Goodreads: Kindar’s Cure

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