Ask the Author: Samuel Ferrer
Answered Questions (5)
Samuel Ferrer
Always remember: you cannot edit a blank page.
Samuel Ferrer
Definitely! Firstly, any newbie would be strongly advised to “workshop” their material with other writers. Not just friends, but writers, who will tend to be more objective and critical. I learned a tremendous amount through this and would consider it critical to my development. Much of the editing process is simply about house cleaning; mitigating one’s tendencies to overwrite. And how others pick these out is often times not what I would have foreseen. Having said that… be strong! One thing I noticed in “workshopping” is that some writers would fold under the criticism, or even ask that the criticism be gentle. As a professional classical musician, my training over many years was significantly based on critical feedback, which is often hard on the ego. But no matter how humbling, I always believed in the process. So I already had this mentality when I came to writing. Writing is intensely personal and therefore it is natural to take the criticism hard, but that is exactly when you need to consciously set yourself aside and sign on to the process. Over time, you will eventually start to weed out arbitrary feedback from that which is very useful.
Samuel Ferrer
I’ve started another work of historical fiction that, in fact, is Chinese in context—with a major twist of setting. However, I’ve had to put it on hold as I’ve recently hosted a very successful crowdfunding campaign to record another CD for my band, Shaolin Fez. As the producer, this will keep me very busy until mid-2017 at which time I hope to dive back into my second novel.
Samuel Ferrer
I get out to a café, preferably with some space around me, headphones tuning out the world. Soundtrack music is wonderful for this, and if there was one recording I played the most during THE LAST GODS, it would surely be from the film “Kama Sutra”: beautiful, exotic, Indian fusion music that suited the atmosphere of my novel. In fact, I wrote a great deal of THE LAST GODS in the bars of Bangkok, Saigon, Hanoi, the cafes of Laos, in the mountains of Sapa, and on location throughout Cambodia.
Samuel Ferrer
I had a long-held dream to write a novel, but never expected it to happen until much later in life. After a trip to Cambodia, I was blindsided by a premise I thought would be fascinating for a story, so one night I made a decision to go for it. During that trip I was struck by a photograph of well-dressed promenaders and vintage cars at the footsteps of a full-scale reconstruction of the top level of Angkor Wat at the 1922 Colonial Exposition in Marseille. I was taken by the exploration and imagination of La Belle Époque and how the French fixation on the East captured what was perhaps the most exotic time during the colonial age. Within this context, a fictitious premise came to me.
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