Ask the Author: Chip Wagar
Answered Questions (5)
Chip Wagar
Travelling to and exploring interesting places. Reading interesting and well written books, especially about history. History really is stranger than fiction. History provides limitless opportunities to research and explore fascinating moments and situations that can be developed or woven into your book. An idea will form and one thing will lead to another ...
Chip Wagar
The writing is, to me, the easy part. The fun part. If you like writing, the only thing you need to do is to put it down on paper or, in this day and age, on your computer. Write it fast. Write it rough. You will edit later, but get it down. The hard part is the marketing. Get a good publicist and take their advice. Remember, no matter how good your book is, it won't matter if nobody knows about it!
Chip Wagar
The tax deductions? LOL ... No, I think the best thing is when someone has read your book and tells you that they enjoyed it. To me, this is the whole point of writing ... to entertain, amuse, and, in the case of my latest book, to thrill and horrify just a little bit ...
Chip Wagar
Of course, the traditional method is to simply stop writing and keep thinking about your story until something comes to you. I have another method. I stop trying to write the "next chapter" or wherever I'm stuck. Instead, I skip ahead to a future chapter or plot point and resume writing until I can come up with the bridge in the plot between where I left off and where I started. Works for me!
Chip Wagar
This book had its origins in my first book, An American in Vienna that took place in the twilight of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire and included the province of Transylvania. The history of Transylvania is so unique and fascinating that I thought a book about its most famous citizen would be a great way to explore and share my own fascination and discoveries about it and why it was such a great choice for Bram Stoker's vampire novel, Dracula.
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