Ask the Author: David McConkey
Answered Questions (2)
David McConkey
Hi Sandy! Gosh, I could get a bit philosophical here if I start to question why this stuff comes out of me! I've read interviews from different authors about why they write and what drives them, and so that's something I've asked myself. I've a friend who has written several books and for him its because he has always, even when he was a little boy, loved telling stories. That's not it for me! I think I write as a means to express my perspective on the world, as a way to be better understood....that may well make me a narcissist I'm not sure!
Anyway, if I am in anyway successful in doing that, in giving voice to whats in me and who I am....then I imagine you can't divorce your cultural heritage from that because it will have shaped you to some extent. How much I think is hard to say...because I've never not had that background to see how different I would be without it! It'd be fun to know if anyone who reads the book could detect a celtic voice/tone if they didn't know anything about the author! I would never view it as a primary source of my identity but we'd probably all be a bit different/see things slightly differently, if we grew up somewhere else in the world.
As far as consciously influencing plot lines, well I'm writing book 2 at the moment but when we hit book 3 - if I/you/we ever get that far! you'll see our celtic ancestors are shown pretty favorably! :)
Anyway, if I am in anyway successful in doing that, in giving voice to whats in me and who I am....then I imagine you can't divorce your cultural heritage from that because it will have shaped you to some extent. How much I think is hard to say...because I've never not had that background to see how different I would be without it! It'd be fun to know if anyone who reads the book could detect a celtic voice/tone if they didn't know anything about the author! I would never view it as a primary source of my identity but we'd probably all be a bit different/see things slightly differently, if we grew up somewhere else in the world.
As far as consciously influencing plot lines, well I'm writing book 2 at the moment but when we hit book 3 - if I/you/we ever get that far! you'll see our celtic ancestors are shown pretty favorably! :)
David McConkey
Hi Sandy,
Sorry for the delay in getting back to you- this is the first time anyone has ever asked me anything on here- it's quite exciting! Normally I don't scroll down my page far enough to see these, but fortunately today I did :)
Deborah is my first attempt at writing, and its the first episode of what will hopefully be at least a trilogy- though it might take more than three books to get to where we're going.
From start to finish it took me four years write- three years of pottering about with it, and one year of 'if-I'm going-to-do-this-then-I-need-to-get-serious' type effort.
I suppose I thought I'd write one and see if anyone would actually want to read more. So far people who have read it seem to like it quite a bit, but as is probably true of most first time authors, the VAST majority of those people are people who know me. The challenge is how to get strangers to take a gamble on some guy they've never heard of. (My last giveaway on here boosted sales by 2! so not exactly a massive success :) )
So that's quite a long answer with quite a bit of info you may or not be at all interested in! Sorry- again, its the first question I've been asked, so I may have got a bit over excited. Thanks for getting in touch anyway, and if you have read it, or ever decide to give Deborah a whirl-then thank-you, and it'd be great to hear what you think of it :)
Sorry for the delay in getting back to you- this is the first time anyone has ever asked me anything on here- it's quite exciting! Normally I don't scroll down my page far enough to see these, but fortunately today I did :)
Deborah is my first attempt at writing, and its the first episode of what will hopefully be at least a trilogy- though it might take more than three books to get to where we're going.
From start to finish it took me four years write- three years of pottering about with it, and one year of 'if-I'm going-to-do-this-then-I-need-to-get-serious' type effort.
I suppose I thought I'd write one and see if anyone would actually want to read more. So far people who have read it seem to like it quite a bit, but as is probably true of most first time authors, the VAST majority of those people are people who know me. The challenge is how to get strangers to take a gamble on some guy they've never heard of. (My last giveaway on here boosted sales by 2! so not exactly a massive success :) )
So that's quite a long answer with quite a bit of info you may or not be at all interested in! Sorry- again, its the first question I've been asked, so I may have got a bit over excited. Thanks for getting in touch anyway, and if you have read it, or ever decide to give Deborah a whirl-then thank-you, and it'd be great to hear what you think of it :)
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