Ask the Author: Danny Scheinmann
Answered Questions (6)
Danny Scheinmann
I don't really get blocked but I do get stuck. What I mean by that is that I know the story isn't working but I don't know how to fix it. I usually leave it for a while and come back to it. I'm fortunate to have other things to occupy me so it's not difficult to get away from the work and take my mind elsewhere.
Danny Scheinmann
Freedom and time to think.
Danny Scheinmann
My first book got rejected by 20 publishers before it went on to become a best seller in the UK. It subsequently got translated in to 21 languages. I learnt that many publishers don't have time to read your full manuscript. They make very quick instinctive decisions based on all sorts of things which are often more to do with marketing strategies and what they perceive are 'hot' subjects or genres. So don't take rejection personally. Only send in work once you know you can go no further with it. I would never send in a first draft. It's a good idea to test the work on a few readers and make changes according to the feedback. I wrote 10 drafts before I was happy with my book. Keep going. Never give up.
Danny Scheinmann
I used to do a lot of storytelling in front of live audiences. Seeing stories work on people in such a direct way inspired me to try writing. I already had a sense of the structure and rhythm of a story from telling so many traditional stories so it was a short hop to writing. Traditional stories still inspire me and filter in to my work.
Danny Scheinmann
Random Acts of Heroic Love was inspired by real events in my family. My grandfather was captured in WW1 by the Russians and was taken to a POW camp in Siberia. He escaped in 1917 and spent 3 years walking back across Russia to his childhood sweetheart in, what is now, Southern Poland.
As for the modern story the opening chapters are actually the most autobiographical part of the book. I was in a bus crash in Ecuador and lost my girlfriend. I didn't acknowledge this fact in the epilogue because I didn't want to talk about it back then or make a big thing of what I had been through.
As for the modern story the opening chapters are actually the most autobiographical part of the book. I was in a bus crash in Ecuador and lost my girlfriend. I didn't acknowledge this fact in the epilogue because I didn't want to talk about it back then or make a big thing of what I had been through.
Danny Scheinmann
My second book is called "The Half Life of Joshua Jones" and will be coming out in September 2015. I'm also writing a screenplay at the moment.
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